It takes compliance experts with a deep understanding of the law to assess risks relating to a business, to properly train personnel, and to help compose policies and procedures regarding HIPAA compliance. That’s why we’ve compiled six reasons to hire one.
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Since HITECH regulations were passed in the early 2010s, HIPAA and HITECH violations have risen.
Healthcare providers need to protect themselves from these violations. Thankfully, that doesn’t have to be an impossible challenge.
Avoiding violations is best done through a systematic approach. When you successfully check these five items off your list, you can trust that you are protected from HIPAA and HITECH violations.
This boils down to password-protecting access to electronic files for the most part. The goal is to limit the viewership of the files to authorized personnel.
Integrity controls go a step further than access control. Where access defends medical files from prying eyes, integrity ensures that authorized personnel only alter the data.
This is the follow-through on controlling access and integrity. An audit of your filing systems will check your technology and procedures to ensure the system is structured correctly and provide proper control over who is seeing and changing data to ensure HIPAA Compliance.
Medical data has to be transmitted regularly. Whether through fax, phone, email, or other, health information cannot be compromised in transmission to ensure HIPAA Compliance.
Authentication is the sum of digital protocols that ensure the other four pillars are maintained. It simply verifies the identity of anyone trying to access health information and determines whether they should be granted that access or not.
It’s easy to see how no single pillar secures health data. But, when they work together, you create a robust, systematic approach to ensuring HIPAA compliance.
Knowing the pillars and implementing them are two different animals. The latter part is best achieved by adding three components to your tech oversight. The first is mobile devices. Most equipment that stays in a medical facility is reasonably secure. Mobile access blows a hole right through that security.
The second component is in the cloud. Cloud-based data sharing and maintenance add layers of security and convenience that make it easier to stay HIPAA compliant.
The final component comes from partnering with the right IT providers. Many managed IT companies focus explicitly on health services. Their experience and expertise, tempered by your knowledge of what needs to be achieved, can readily provide HIPAA security that protects you from unintentional violations.
Any company that stores or processes financial data transactions must be PCI compliant.
To comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (or PCI DSS) organizations must meet stringent requirements for their software design, network architecture, security management and other measures.
Organizations that do not comply have a higher chance of experiencing a data breach. Below is more information about the history of PCI DSS can help business owners appreciate why it is important.
Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express originally created PCI DDS in the early 2000s to prevent credit card fraud. The major credit card companies originally banded together to develop a higher security standard since they experienced significant financial losses during the mid to late 90s.
This was partially caused by cyber criminals who took advantage of the anonymity of shopping online to commit fraud. Now merchants around the globe that accept credit cards must comply with the security programs.
As online payments became more common, the credit card brands decided to create the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The council is an independent group that oversees the merchants and organizations that process credit card data.
The PCI Security Standard Council also periodically updates their certification standards. For example, one of their updates was requiring that online stores have a  Transport Layer Security replace Secure Sockets Layers as the dominant encryption method for payments online.
We view compliance as a process instead of a one-time goal. After all, just because a company meets the PCI standards once doesn’t mean it will remain compliant permanently.
Besides striving to continuously meet and exceed PCI standards, we are vigilant about preventing data breaches and protecting cardholder’s sensitive financial information.
Please contact us today so you can speak with one of our experienced staff members.
Allowing customers to pay for a product or service with a credit card online is an incredible convenience for customers and a practical necessity, but requires PCI compliance.
In order to qualify to take credit card orders, you will need to be compliant with PCI compliance standard set forth by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. There are several parts of PCI compliance that need to be taken into consideration.
One part of the PCI compliance that you will need to be in compliance with is server compliance. You will need to have the proper controls on your computer server program that will help to protect the data that is stored on the server. This will help to avoid and prevent any serious hacks from occurring and will keep your customer data safe.
While your hardware will need to be in compliance, your software will also need to be in PCI compliance. The software program will need to be able to properly protect all of the customer information throughout the online shopping process. This includes the process of putting items into a shopping cart, inputting credit card information, and submitting an order.
While there are PCI compliance regulations and expectations set forth today, it is important to remember that the regulations are constantly changing to keep up with changes in risks. It is important to continue to stay on top of the regulations to ensure you continue to qualify to accept credit card payments.
If you are looking to enhance your online shopping security, contact us to learn more about how we can ensure that you are in PCI compliance.
If your business needs to follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996’s, or HIPAA’s, requirements, then you need to have a disaster recovery plan. Many small companies accidentally conflate the ideas of a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. Keep the two separate and stay in compliance.
Both of the two plans have similar circumstances and preparation work. They outline the procedures you have in place to keep backup data safe and ready to use in the event of an emergency, and they both have action steps for when they are triggered.
But they also serve different purposes: a business continuity plan outlines how to keep your company moving during an ongoing emergency while a disaster recovery plan outlines how your IT department will bring the backup data securely to the forefront. One is about keeping the network as undamaged as possible while the other is about repairing damaged data stores.
Different companies use different strategies. Before you get stuck with too many options and not enough specifics online, follow these steps:
While IT support companies can’t tell you what other businesses in your state and industry are doing, they know what every plan should include. Tap into their advice (and possible templates) so you know your plan is compliant and competitive with other plans.
If you don’t know what your plan and cybersecurity requirements are, it’s harder to stay compliant. Even as you use other resources to pull a plan together, find what HIPAA has to say word-for-word.
If you want to get started building out your disaster recovery plan, contact us.
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